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Office Depot Allegedly Diagnosing Computers With Nonexistent Viruses To Meet Sales Goals (consumerist.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Consumerist: A new report claims that some Office Depot employees are falsely claiming computers are infected with viruses in order to meet sales goals. According to KIRO-TV in Seattle, employees of the office supply retailer allege that pressure to sell protection plans and other services has led store staffers to misdiagnose computers with viruses. To investigate the claims, the station took six computers to various Office Depot stores in Washington and Oregon for PC Health Checks. There technicians determined that four out of the six computers showed symptoms of malware. To fix the issues, the employees attempted to sell services costing up to $200. The only problem? The computers were out of the box new. A second test by a unaffiliated computer security firm found no symptoms of malware and no needs for repair. The employee tells KIRO that workers selling the services are just following corporate mandates. To make matters worse, he says, the company posts sales goals and current employee sales in the break room for all to see. This, he claims, creates more aggressive associates to push harder when selling the protection plans for nonexistent programs.
... yeah. Not surprised at all. The encouragement to flat-out lie to meet unrealistic sales goals (for the extended warranties and services) is about 90% of the reason I quit back when they started offering these services.
While there are idiots in every establishment you work for, Geek Squad is not inundated with them. I worked for them while in school and some of the guys took a lot of pride in their work. They have some good tools and training at their disposal. The front Geek Squad guys are the "customer techs" which focus more on selling and checking machines in and out. The smarter guys linger in the back and are known as advanced repair agents. Those are the ones manually removing malware when scans don't get it all, fixing boot issues, upgrading hardware, etc. Sure, requiring A+ would help immensely with getting rid of all the idiots, but some stores run a great crew.
Ever take a Lenovo Windows 8 machine out of the box? The shovelware that encumbers it boggles the mind. It took me three hours to scrape that crap from my sister's brand new machine. Given the performance of the machine before and after, I'd go to court today and testify it was legitimately infected with malware.
Ironically, for that much work at my rates, Office Depot would be undercharging.
John